2012 Scripts Nominated for Oscars

Here are some of my thoughts on this year’s Best Screenplay Oscar nominees. I’d love to hear your thoughts too. So please add your comments at the end of the article and let’s get a great discussion going. Adapted Silver Linings Playbook All stories concerning mental illness require some kind of cheat. If the hero is truly mentally ill, he is compelled to act a certain way. Hopefully his doctor can find a drug that can control it, because with a lot of mental illness we are not in the realm of choice and will power. But that’s not dramatic, and it’s not funny. If you can’t accept this cheat you may have trouble enjoying Silver Linings Playbook. The lead character, Pat, clearly has a mental illness at the beginning of the story. But through the love of a good (but also troubled) woman, he not only overcomes his illness, he matures at the end. Putting aside the reality of this change, the way Pat gets there is beautifully written, and is one of my two favorites for winning Best Adaptation.

Silver Linings Playbook is a rare example of a transcendent romantic comedy. Yes, it hits all the story beats of this highly choreographed form, as it must. But what really sets it apart is that it also twists every beat in a unique way. This allows Silver Linings Playbook to overcome the predictability of the romantic comedy form, an almost impossible feat for a writer to accomplish in this day and age. I also have to mention the wonderful scene work and dialogue in this film. The scene where Tiffany makes the case to Pat’s father that she is in fact good luck for all of them is an instant classic, and worth careful study for anyone trying to master the screenwriter’s craft. Argo My other favorite for wining Best Adaptation is Argo. I’ve written a review of this film already. But let me say here that writer Chris Terrio has pulled off the difficult task of combining the True Story genre with Thriller and Action to produce a real knockout punch of a film. Let me be clear. The craft in this script does not come from transcending the main genre. As a couple of readers of my in-depth review accurately pointed out, the hero has no moral flaw and only the barest psychological weakness. Because of this unique story, I don’t believe that the lack of a serous character weakness is a big story problem inArgo. But it does keep the film from hitting the pinnacle of artistic success. So where does the quality of this script come from, if not from transcending the form? It comes from the seamless way Argo combines genres that don’t normally go together. And it is a classic example of the screenwriter’s craft, of using the power of the cut in cinema to create an inexorable vortex hurtling the viewer forward at a faster and faster rate. This script is a crowd pleaser in the best sense of that term, and that feat should not be underestimated. Life of Pi I came to the film, Life of Pi, having already read the book, and though I liked it I was not a big fan. I loved the basic premise of the boy and the tiger together on a lifeboat, and found many of the incidents enjoyable. But the overall story for me was flat and episodic. Also, it did not make its thematic case for a God, in whatever form one wants to believe, nor did it make the case for the healing power of storytelling itself (something I fervently believe). Given that, I was impressed that the screenwriter, David Magee, did as well as he did in translating this Personal Myth-Fantasy Memoir to the screen. Unfortunately, what I saw as the flaws in the original book remain. And I think Magee made a serious mistake in the way he handled the storyteller frame. In my Masterpiece class, I talk extensively about this powerful but difficult story tool. In Life of Pi, the storyteller frame does not lead to a new dramatic conclusion, and the constant return to the storyteller throughout the film makes the story seem even more episodic than it already is. Lincoln I’ve said in my more in-depth review that I believe Lincoln will win Best Adaptation, but I will be sad if it does. This film is rife with Oscar Disease, wherein the patient is horribly bloated, boring and believes he is doing God’s work among the Great Unlearned. Starting with the laughably phony and absurd opening scene, every scene in this film is at least twice as long as it should be. Tony Kushner and Steven Spielberg, if you are going to make me take my medicine for 2 1/2 hours, at least wrap it up in some sugar (that is, plot, artistic craft and subtle, non-preachy dialogue). Original Moonrise Kingdom While I enjoyed this film the first time I saw it, I wasn’t blown away. Mostly that’s because the film is small, and I feel that children entering those unpleasant teenage years should be hidden in a closet until they have a coming out party at the age of 21. But when I saw Moonrise Kingdom a second time, I was able to see the incredible craftsmanship in this script. This is a transcendent romantic comedy, which is tough enough to pull off (and now two in one year!). But the writers also add in terrific work on story world, namely the kind of Americana utopia found in such classics as Meet Me in St. Louis, You Can’t Take It with You and Jean Shepherd’s A Christmas Story. Moonrise Kingdom opens in the mini-utopia known as the “buzzing household.” But the flip is that this is an apparent utopia, because the wife is having an affair and the teenage daughter, the pretty princess I like to call “Perfume Girl,” is miserable. We then jump to another mini-utopia, the perfectly organized, perfectly geometrical scout camp, home of “Nerd Scout.” But this too is an apparent utopia, because Nerd Scout is an outsider and wants to run away with Perfume Girl. With an approaching storm giving us a vortex (the same technique found in Argo), the writers twist every romantic comedy beat in a fresh and endearing way and converge on a literal cliffhanger. We end with a new home and scout utopia, and the memory of the perfect moment and the only true utopia in the story, when the boy and girl created their Moonrise Kingdom by the bay. If you don’t like your lead characters to be 12, this movie may not do much for you. But this script is sensational, and while it has no chance of winning in the Original category, it should. Flight Flight’s strength is that it’s an actor’s film, written with a big juicy starring role. A lead character that can attract a movie star is a big advantage in the Hollywood sweepstakes. But Flight’s strength is also its first great weakness. The lead character is so dominant that the film is essentially one long monologue where Denzel Washington gets to strut his stuff. Now Denzel struts very well, but that doesn’t make for a good story. When you wed the lead character’s dominance to a story about alcoholism, you end up with a predictable plot, a one-note character and a painfully obvious and false climax. You can probably tell I don’t think this script can or should win. Django Unchained Django Unchained is a genre mash up that is quite enjoyable for about 2/3 of its very long running time. Writer Quentin Tarantino combines the spaghetti Western with Comedy, and adds in his usual funny and sometimes bizarre dialogue. The scene where the Klansmen complain that they can’t see though the eyeholes is hilarious. But to see what’s really going on here, it’s important to look at Tarantino’s underlying story strategy in both this film and his previous film, Inglorious Basterds. Part of the reason Django became less enjoyable to me as it went on is that the fundamental sadism of the writer-director became overwhelming. Simply put, Tarantino seems to take extreme pleasure in finding creative new ways to maim, torture and kill people. As his career has progressed, Tarantino has found the need to justify this sadism. So for him the question naturally arises: how do I create a story world where this extreme level of violence is not only acceptable, it’s necessary? Answer: create stories where the heroes fight two of the worst crimes against humanity in history, the Nazis and slavery. It’s win-win-win: Tarantino gets free reign to torture and kill to his heart’s content, the audience gets to feel good about taking revenge against all those evil people, and critics get to applaud Tarantino for his masterful take on the “big themes.” Note to Quentin: please, please stop acting in your own movies. The moment you show up in this movie is the moment it officially ends. Zero Dark Thirty The hit against Zero Dark Thirty is not that the writer, Mark Boal, showed the CIA torturing victims. And if this script doesn’t win Best Original Screenplay, it won’t be because three U.S. Senators criticized it. It will be because the script’s not that good. I admit, I don’t get why critics love Boal’s scripts. I thought The Hurt Locker was one of the most over-rated films of that year, primarily because of the script. The writer is supposedly a fanatic about authenticity, but every person I know with military experience has said that film was so full of absurdities it was hard for them to watch it. In Zero, Boal has set a bigger task for himself, bringing down Osama Bin Laden. In reality, this was a ten-year project that involved hundreds if not thousands of people. And that creates a story nightmare for the writer. His solution: structure the story on the desire line of one woman. Notice this gives a potentially sprawling story real focus and narrative drive. But the costs are high. This decision limits plot to the somewhat predictable actions of one person. It completely removes the possibility of character change, and even the importance of character itself; our hero is a cold, determined woman whose only change, or sign of humanity, is that she sheds a tear of relief when the whole thing is over. Oh, and did I mention, making this a one-woman job is absurd. Whether you agree or disagree with my views and my choices, I hope this article gets you to look under the surface, to see the structural decisions these writers made in creating their scripts. Remember, it’s all about studying the pros so you can learn techniques that may result in one of your scripts being nominated for Best Screenplay.

Hit 2012 Movies Show Why It's All About Learning Genres

For years I’ve been making the case that the key to becoming a professional screenwriter is to follow the first rule of Hollywood: it buys and sells genres. If you don’t know what Hollywood is buying you have no chance of selling them your script.

Genres are different kinds of stories, like comedy, detective and fantasy. These stories have proven their appeal to worldwide audiences for decades, centuries and sometimes over thousands of years. Each genre has anywhere from 8-15 story beats (story events) that must be present in your story if the script is to have any chance of success.

It would be nice if all you had to do to write a sellable genre script is to learn the story beats of your form and execute them properly. Unfortunately that’s what every other writer is doing. You need to do more.

In the past I’ve emphasized the first strategy for writing a genre script that stands above the crowd, which is to transcend the genre. This means that you not only hit every beat of your form, you twist them in a unique way that no one’s ever seen before.

This year we’ve seen many more films that use the second key strategy for writing a unique genre script: mixing genres. Hollywood here is using the age-old marketing technique of “give ‘em two for the price of one.” Except that now it’s more like three or four for the price of one. Almost all of the hit films of the year are a mix of multiple genres. And they, like 99% of the films that come out of Hollywood year in and year out, choose from these 11 story forms: Action, Comedy, Crime, Detective, Fantasy, Horror, Love, Memoir-True Story, Myth, Science Fiction and Thriller.

The question is: how do you do it? It’s not as easy as it appears. When you combine genres you run the risk of story chaos, because each genre comes with a unique hero, desire, opponent, theme and story beats.

Let’s look at the biggest hits of the year and see which genres the writers combined and how. One strategy for mixing genres used by three of the year’s biggest blockbusters – Hunger Games, The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises – is to combine one or two genres with the Myth form. Myth is the most popular genre in the world, which is why it is the foundation for more hit films than any other form. Myth travels the world better than the other forms because it deals with big archetypal characters and life situations, so it transcends cultural boundaries. But Myth is almost always combined with other genres that both update and unify the often-episodic Myth.

Hunger Games combines Myth with Science Fiction. Book author and co-screenwriter, Suzanne Collins, understood the power of this combination right from the premise, which is based on the classic Greek myth, Theseus and the Minotaur. Every year King Aegeus must send seven young men and seven young women to be eaten by the Minotaur in ritual payment for a crime. Collins’ main character, Katniss, is based on one of the major Greek goddesses, Artemis (aka Diana), the huntress. The best beat of the story, when Katniss shoots an arrow through an apple in the mouth of a pig, is right out of the Swiss legend of William Tell.

Collins then uses Science Fiction to create a futuristic world that takes the capitalist foundation of American society to its logical extreme. In this world, competition for show and money has taken on life and death stakes. This mash-up of ancient past with possible future gives the audience the sense that this story isn’t specific to a particular time and place. It is universal; it is today.

The Avengers combines Myth with Action and elements of Fantasy. All superheroes are Myth characters (especially the Norse god Thor), and bringing them together to form a Dream Team is as old as both Greek and Norse mythology. But the structure of this story is taken from Action, in particular a sub-form of Action known as the Suicide Mission story. Suicide Mission, like its cousin, the Heist story in the Crime genre, shows us a collection of all-stars who reluctantly form a team to accomplish an almost impossible goal. Using some excellent techniques from TV Drama, writer Joss Whedon takes these mythical heroes through all the action beats, ending with the definitive beat in the Action story, the final bloody battle.

The first film in the Batman trilogy written by the Nolan brothers, Batman Begins, hits and twists every beat of the Myth genre perfectly. But the second film, The Dark Knight, with its showdown between Batman and The Joker, is really a Fantasy Crime story, with the original Myth elements sitting underneath. The Dark Knight is the greatest superhero film ever made, and that put tremendous pressure on the Nolans to top it with The Dark Knight Rises. Their approach? A Crime Epic, a story of worldwide injustice with story beats right out of the French Revolution. That was probably a bridge too far, because even terrific writers like the Nolans could not inflate the Crime beats to that level. But you have to love their ambition.

This is the time of year when the Oscar contenders show up. The hottest picture right now, with a major shot at actually winning Best Picture, is Argo. Argo uses the strategy of mixing genres that rarely go together, in this case True Story with Political Thriller and Action.

True Stories typically have a gritty reality but lack dramatic shape. Political Thrillers are extremely choreographed and intensely dramatic. But at least when done in film, they usually pit a single hero against a vast organized conspiracy. So they often end badly. Because of the unique facts of this true story, these virtually opposite genres fit perfectly together and each genre’s strength solves the other genre’s weakness.

But the usual beats of the True Story form did require writer Chris Terrio to make a big change in the traditional Thriller beats. In the classic Thriller, the opponent is hidden and plot comes from reveals. Not here. The Iranian security force is the clear opponent from the beginning. So Terrio had to pull from the Action genre to create his plot. He sets up a huge vortex, a crosscut between the hero trying to get the hostages out and the opponents closing in for the kill. Everything will converge at the airport, and the combination of Action and Thriller beats gives the film a knockout ending.

Mixing genres is a dynamite strategy if you want the best chance to write a script that Hollywood might actually buy. But it’s not easy. You have to be able to execute. And that means you have to learn the genre beats of every form you’re mixing, and learn them so well that you can make some major adjustments to handle the unique qualities of your particular story. Each genre is a complex story system. But the good news is you can learn them. You just have to willing to put in the effort and the time.

Argo

Argo is a terrific political thriller that will probably get some Oscar nominations. I hope that includes one for writer Chris Terrio whose ability to tell an epic true story using the thriller genre allows him to transcend both true story and thriller.

The political thriller is a popular sub-genre in novels, but much less so in film. That’s because the typical opposition in political thrillers – some form of government agency – is so big and so hidden that it’s not a fair fight. Which means political thrillers in film often end badly.

But that’s not the case in Argo. This film is based on real events whose outcome we know, or at least suspect, going in. Besides giving us an upbeat ending, these real events give the highly choreographed thriller beats a raw, gritty believability and tremendous emotional impact.

Still, the true story foundation creates some real problems for the writer. The biggest difficulty you face in writing a true story is that real events don’t tend to have dramatic shape. They often don’t build to a final decisive battle and they often have long stretches of time where no story beats occur.
Again, that’s not the case with Argo. The final battle is extremely dramatic and the short time period in which the key events unfold means there is no down time. But the true story foundation does require Terrio to structure his thriller in a much different way than normal.

In the typical thriller, the hero investigates an apparent opponent who may, or may not, be guilty of a crime. The opponent’s true power, and the final truth of that character’s guilt, is parceled out over the course of the story. Notice that plot in this form of thriller is based on revelations, and we save the biggest revelation for last.

In Argo, the opponent is not a suspicious, hidden character but rather a known, extremely powerful Iranian security force that will capture and possibly kill the heroes. So plot will not come from a succession of reveals. There is nothing about the enemy we don’t know from the very beginning.

Instead plot must come from the hero’s plan and, even more so, from a succession of building attacks against the hostges. So the writer sets up a huge vortex, a crosscut between the hero trying to get the hostages out and the opponents closing in for the kill.

Terrio creates the vortex by beginning with the endpoint in space and time, the airport, where heroes and opponents finally decide the issue. He then works backward to the beginning of the two prongs: the hero creating his plan and the opponents trying to find who is missing.

One of the key techniques for setting up the vortex properly has to do with the desire line of the story. The desire line in thrillers is especially tricky because it always involves some version of investigating while under attack. Notice there is a push-pull effect on the desire line that is difficult for the writer to calibrate. When the hero is investigating he is active and moving forward. But over the course of the story the hero comes under increasingly aggressive assault by the opposition, which makes him reactive and knocks him back.

In Argo, Terrio replaces the investigation line of most thrillers with an even clearer goal: get the captives out. The opponents have an equally clear goal: keep the captives in. The endpoint of both those goals is the same place, the airport. So now the vortex story structure is simply a matter of speeding up the crosscut as the heroes and opponents approach the convergent point.

This crosscutting vortex structure goes to the heart of the film medium itself. It’s as fundamental as the crosscut between the cowboy racing to save the damsel tied to the tracks and the oncoming train that’s going to run her over. In this simplest form of crosscut, the point is to set up the pressure cooker effect. The faster you crosscut as you approach the end, the greater the pressure builds on the audience. If the hero wins, the result is total elation.

The writer adds a number of other story and dialogue techniques that make this script really sing, especially some very funny inside Hollywood jokes as the hero is concocting his plan. I saw the film at the Writer’s Guild theater and one joke in particular about directors had the audience in stitches. In a story this intense, comedy plays the same role as the fake attack does in horror. It releases the pressure on the audience only to allow the writer to kick the pressure up to an even higher level.

But the key to the success of this script and film is the writer’s ability to infuse an already dramatic true story with powerful thriller beats. Thriller tends to be a very narrow form. In the Detective, Crime Story and Thriller Class I talk about transcending the form by combining it with its genre opposite, the epic. By accomplishing this difficult feat, Chris Terrio has written one of the best films of the year.